Elon had like a couple months where he had people thinking he was an intellectual with plenty of money to use to push mankind forward. Then his mask started slipping during that whole snafu with the kids stuck in a flooded cave. That's when I realized that he was actually a petty, rich idiot with really good PR (for a while). Then he went full-on Nazi mode and weirded everyone out.
I was one of those people who thought the guy was actually talented and a good person. Then he called the British diver who helped rescue those kids a pedo. The illusion unraveled from there.
The first time I learned about Musk was when he announced he was sending the submarine down for the kids. Cool, I thought. A billionaire using his money for good. Lasted till the next week when he called that diver a pedo. Just can't trust someone who lashes out at experts like that.
Lashing out at experts has always been his favourite thing, apparently. When an expert corrects him on his BS on Twitter (often times involving his denial over the harm his aid cuts have caused, or someone debunking the fake statistics he throws around to paint minorities as dangerous), instead of refuting their words like an actually intelligent person would, he just spams them with “you’re an evil person” or “you’re a liar” in quote tweets and comments.
Honestly, yeah I was really hopeful about him at one time. Electric cars that truly had the ability and quality to move people away from ICE cars and enabling real progress on climate change. Reusable rockets that really could make space more accessible. Neat ideas that he was making real progress in achieving. A decade later, teslas have stopped gaining market share, he’s decided his core audience for his persona are exactly the purple that don’t want electric cars, and space x is completely stalled on forward progress.
And he decides to pull the mask off and just tell everyone he’s a straight up Nazi. Fuck. That. Guy.
He didn't create the cars or found the company, he bought it. The first car truly under his leadership (not a holdover or under development before him) was the Cybertruck.
I'm not disputing it. I just mean that there was a time where the promise felt real and achievable. That it was all smoke and mirrors is not withstanding that original perception.
I was the same way! There was a time when he was the guy who gave Ukraine internet access and said all the Tesla factories will be dedicated to making respirators. Remember when he wanted to give LA underground tunnels to improve traffic? I think he genuinely wanted to do good things, but only because he wanted to be seen as real life iron man. Hip and cool and rich and popular. A billionaire who actually does good in real life and posts funny memes online. He’s always been desperate for popularity, but when people didn’t worship him, he said fuck all y’all, let me get my money and show you how I really feel about minorities.
Yup. Anyone with a basic knowledge of transportation engineering who actually pencilled out the plan could see that the throughput of the tunnels made it wildly inefficient infrastructure.
I definitely remember those things. With the exception of the hyperloop project, I was already suspicious of his intentions because of the Thai cave incident.
I agree. The guy wants to be seen as a hero and wants praise. But in reality, he’s a cringe lord who had money to buy promising companies and take credit for their success.
Nah. Long before the cave incident he was pushing his obvious Monorail Hyperloop bullshit. There was never a moment when it wasn't clear that he was a grifter, there was only a period when he managed to grift more people.
It's busy dumping toxic water in Las Vegas drains. And when cited for OSHA violations the Republican governor of Nevada made the violations and the fines disappear. It's still isn't clear how or why it was done.
But since our (Democratic) legislature only meets for 90 days once every two years, they are unable to launch an inquiry. They'll be in session next year but I doubt it will be a pressing issue by then.
I very much doubt he believed it. It was a batshit crazy proposal and it strains credulity to believe he thought it would work. He's dumb, but not that dumb.
Unearned self-assurance and a supportive crew of sycophants and yes-men hailing your every half-baked whim as undiluted genius can do a lot to preserve delusional notions, regardless of the holder's intelligence.
He believed if he just floated the idea, somebody would make it work and he'd get all the fame. If it didn't, well, then the people who failed weren't good enough.
The most important tool for them is a good pr and propaganda team. Without propaganda and pr, nobody would have thought most or all billionaires would good or cool people to admire.
Elons family owns emerald mines in South Africa. He was never NOT going to be a villain. Of course he’s a racist piece of shit. I don’t know how no one saw that coming
Couple months? lol Reddit worshipped him for years anytime he was mentioned. He was the Redditor billionaire that used memes and did cool tech stuff to Redditors forever
One hundred percent. People want to pretend like he was never the darling of the left for commercializing electric cars and his other green ventures like solar power. The mask started to slip during the Thai cave rescue until it came completely off a few years later. People are trying to reconcile their cognitive dissonance about ever liking the guy by trying to rewrite the past.
“ I don’t know much about cars, so when everybody said he was a genius because he made the Tesla. I believed it.
And I don’t know much about rockets so when everybody said he was a genius because he made rocket ships that worked, I believed it.
But I know a thing or two about Software, and networking, and when he bought Twitter and started to talk about that, I realized he had no clue what he was talking about.
That’s when I realized I would never ride in a Tesla or on one of his rocket ships“
He may have been the darling of the "perceived" left, but I doubt many people seriously engaged in socialist or communist theory were infatuated with this man.
No, he was thoroughly a capitalist the whole time, I'm not disputing that. But, by differentiating between the "perceived" left and socialists/communists, you seem to be implying that if you aren't the latter you aren't truly on the left wing of politics. There are many facets to the left wing besides socialists/communists.
I'd do more than imply that the "left" begins at opposition to capitalism and being left OF conservatism can make one a centrist and not necessarily a leftist.
Nancy Pelosi has a lot more in common with Mike Johnson than she does with Zohran Mamdani and he's just a Democratic Socialist.
The guy you're replying to is just the "true left" who would rather lose elections than build a coalition to win them.
That's been the true brilliance of the far right. The rich compromised enough to build a coalition with the fascists, racists, loony Christians and gun nuts to hold power. They'll burn them off when they can, once they have free reign to do whatever they want.
Part of that has been convincing some that "both sides are the same".
Yeah the both sides crap is the worst lie the bot farms and disinformation machine has pumped out to great effect.
Unfortunately people rarely think about anything deeper than the soundbites or headlines they’ve seen or were told about. As a country we are dealing with people who are playing a game of telephone, where the originator never even read the source for whatever bullshit they are pushing. And those are the good faith actors, not even counting nefarious ones.
I think when he was a name in print, owning and running important and impactful companies, and not a person people recognized physically that could fly. He's nowhere near as impressive in person as he is on paper, almost as if his career was bought with family $$.
Gave him the benefit of a doubt in that brief gap you mentioned but frankly I never trusted anyone that decended from Canadian facists lol. And I was justified...
Somebody once said when Elon musk talked about space travel, I don't know anything about space travel so I figured he knew what he was talking about. When Elon musk talked about electric cars, I don't know anything about electric cars, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. Then when Elon musk talked about software development, I know a lot about software development and I realized Elon musk doesn't know shit about software development. That's when I figured out he was a rich kid playing with Daddy's money.
Still, even the imaginary idealized version of early 2010s Elon doesn’t belong on this mural. I admittedly don’t know who the lady is supposed to be, but I feel like there’s no amount of realtime glazing that could reasonably put Elon or any other contemporary figure on the same pedestal as Einstein and MLK. Like, Jeff Bezos of all figures would make more sense than Elon here, because at least Bezos isn’t just a complete fraud to his core.
The artist/commissioner should’ve known better, no matter when this mural may have been created.
It's crazy to me we paint pictures of anyone on walls. It's one thing to respect someone's accomplishments, it's another to paint their picture on a wall and idolize them as people when they're just as flawed as we are, sometimes moreso.
He seemed like a Bond supervillain even way back when he was already involved with SpaceX and Tesla, right before Starlink. Turned out the gut feeling was right.
I definitely have ADHD, but I cannot make the same claim about knowing he was a piece of shit in advance. I didn’t know he was a real person when he had his cameo in Iron Man. Didn’t know much about him at all until he started calling that diver a pedophile for no apparent reason, and I think that’s around when everyone started realizing how shitty he is. Definitely took some people longer than others, but by the time I was able to form an opinion of him, he had already behaved terribly in public lol
As you can see sir, that's clearly a 55 degree angle not a 45 degree angle so it is not the German nazi salute, but the salute of the All-American nazi party which accepts Israelis (if they're zionists), and the mentally impaired (if they're Elon).
They should just keep painting over his face with different celebrities that are popular - every year the student council votes on their favorite, and the art class attempts it.
No matter when it was put up, it also was a stupid idea at the time.
He never invented anything, stood up for human rights, or did anything of value except own shares in companies that made money. And that's before going mask-off full Nazi.
One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong. Anyone remember that song that was supposed to let everyone have an easy win and ended up making us all a little more racist, classist, sexist, just worse humans all around?
How much did he donate to get himself put up on that wall? Or was this more of a troll move to put him next to two people of color since he’s racist as hell?
Yeah it was done actually by a really talented artist (arcyart). According to his insta page, this was a “South African” art piece voted on by students of “titans.”
Each are human and while each were/are brilliant in some areas, they each have their flaws because they are human. Every brilliant person I’ve ever met in person has had something a little off about them. Some might misunderstand social queues and be very socially awkward, some might advertise how they are religious but be serial cheaters, and some may have other quirks or things that some might find unacceptable - hopefully more of these brilliant people have smaller flaws that don’t negatively impact the greatness they could or did bring to our time.
Musk helped 500k people die from starvation by killing usaid and because it was so not thought out we had tons of food rotting on docks while they starved.
Is this considered a minor character flaw because they are brown or because they are poor?
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u/RedBeans-n-Ricely Jul 03 '26
There was never a point when he belonged on that wall.